A WHILE ago I took a holiday; mouched, played truant from my road.
Jem the waggoner hailed me as he passed - he was going to the mill - would I ride with him and come back atop of the full sacks?
I hid my hammer in the hedge, climbed into the great waggon white and fragrant with the clean sweet meal, and flung myself down on the empty flour bags.The looped-back tarpaulin framed the long vista of my road with the downs beyond; and I lay in the cool dark, caressed by the fresh breeze in its thoroughfare, soothed by the strong monotonous tramp of the great grey team and the music of the jangling harness.
Jem walked at the leaders' heads; it is his rule when the waggon is empty, a rule no "company" will make him break.At first Iregretted it, but soon discovered I learnt to know him better so, as he plodded along, his thickset figure slightly bent, his hands in his pockets, his whip under one arm, whistling hymn tunes in a low minor, while the great horses answered to his voice without touch of lash or guiding rein.
I lay as in a blissful dream and watched my road unfold.The sun set the pine-boles aflare where the hedge is sparse, and stretched the long shadows of the besom poplars in slanting bars across the white highway; the roadside gardens smiled friendly with their trim-cut laurels and rows of stately sunflowers - a seemly proximity this, Daphne and Clytie, sisters in experience, wrapped in the warm caress of the god whose wooing they need no longer fear.Here and there we passed little groups of women and children off to work in the early cornfields, and Jem paused in his fond repetition of "The Lord my pasture shall prepare" to give them good-day.
It is like Life, this travelling backwards - that which has been, alone visible - like Life, which is after all, retrospective with a steady moving on into the Unknown, Unseen, until Faith is lost in Sight and experience is no longer the touchstone of humanity.The face of the son of Adam is set on the road his brothers have travelled, marking their landmarks, tracing their journeyings; but with the eyes of a child of God he looks forward, straining to catch a glimpse of the jewelled walls of his future home, the city "Eternal in the Heavens."Presently we left my road for the deep shade of a narrow country way where the great oaks and beeches meet overhead and no hedge-clipper sets his hand to stay nature's profusion; and so by pleasant lanes scarce the waggon's width across, now shady, now sunny, here bordered by thickset coverts, there giving on fruitful fields, we came at length to the mill.
I left Jem to his business with the miller and wandered down the flowery meadow to listen to the merry clack of the stream and the voice of the waters on the weir.The great wheel was at rest, as Ilove best to see it in the later afternoon; the splash and churn of the water belong rather to the morning hours.It is the chief mistake we make in portioning out our day that we banish rest to the night-time, which is for sleep and recreating, instead of setting apart the later afternoon and quiet twilight hours for the stretching of weary limbs and repose of tired mind after a day's toil that should begin and end at five.
The little stone bridge over the mill-stream is almost on a level with the clear running water, and I lay there and gazed at the huge wheel which, under multitudinous forms and uses, is one of the world's wonders, because one of the few things we imitative children have not learnt from nature.Is it perchance a memory out of that past when Adam walked clear-eyed in Paradise and talked with the Lord in the cool of the day? Did he see then the flaming wheels instinct with service, wondrous messengers of the Most High vouchsafed in vision to the later prophets?
Maybe he did, and going forth from before the avenging sword of his own forging to the bitterness of an accursed earth, took with him this bright memory of perfect, ceaseless service, and so fashioned our labouring wheel - pathetic link with the time of his innocency.
It is one of many unanswered questions, good to ask because it has no answer, only the suggestion of a train of thought: perhaps we are never so receptive as when with folded hands we say simply, "This is a great mystery." I watched and wondered until Jem called, and I had to leave the rippling weir and the water's side, and the wheel with its untold secret.
